Time Travel

the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s

1 light year = 9.4605284 × 10¹⁵ meters, or exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km

One astronomical unit (the distance from the Sun to the Earth). It takes approximately 499 seconds (8.32 minutes) for light to travel this distance.

*the distance to the Sun is never constant, during different seasons, from different places on Earth, so really this scientific measure is also based on where on Earth you are and at what time of year, and what the weather is at the time and other factors

speed of sound at sea level = 340.29 m / s

no sound in space though, vacuum

sources:  www.space.com, wiktionary.com, wikipedia.com, http://www.google.com, HubbleSite.org

This website has 26 nearest star distances: 26 nearest stars

how far away can we see: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_far_away_can_the_best_telescope_see

Disclaimer: This post may only be mostly scientifically accurate, so for exact measures you can use the above, which are exactly accurate.

For the theoretical measures i talk about, well just try to imagine or look for the exact measures on the internet.

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i was reading an article once and it said that, you know, a light year is the distance to the sun*, and it takes light ~8 1/2 minutes  to get to the Earth. so, from what i already knew i knew that that meant anything that you see happening on the Sun right now, really happened 8 1/2 minutes ago. and i thought, well no one in the forums really would care about 8 1/2 minutes ago, what’s the big deal?

i had never heard anyone say anything about it before, so i looked it up on the internet, and it’s true, you’re looking at solar storms and flares that happened 8.32 minutes ago. my dad always said if you are thinking of it someone else has already thought it once, so i usually exaggerate things that i think of to try to see if i’ve heard somewhere of the exaggerated version.

[people don’t walk around with a glass of gas in case they run out, but if you exaggerate and say a 5 gallon tank of gas, sure lots of people haul a 5 gallon tank of gas in case they run out.]

so, the distance to the sun is 1 ly, let’s just say we look at a star that is 10 lys away. wait, that’s only about 83 minutes. the Hubble telescope can see billions of light years away from Earth orbit. so multiply 1 Billion times 8.32 minutes you get 8,320,000,000 minutes. that’s staggering. that is a little over 15829 years. so the Hubble telescope is sending us pictures from 15-20,000 years in the past !

if you are looking through a telescope is the telescope taking you back in time with that curved lens? well, i’ve never seen anything anywhere about curved lens and reducing the amount of time from here to what you’re looking at. right here, i’m in real time. at the other end of the telescope i may not be 15,000 years in the past, but i could probably look back a couple of days.

what if we could travel faster than the speed of light? could we travel to a star far away and look back and see the dinosaurs here on Earth? could we travel through the telescope and go back in time to that place at that time?

I wonder. ………